Red Rabbit.pdf

Red Rabbit

by Tom Clancy

To Danny D and the men of Engine 52 and Ladder 52

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

HENRY DAVID THOUEAU

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or

are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or

locales is entirely coincidental.

G. P. Putnam's Sons

Publishers Since 1838

a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clancy, Tom, date. Red rabbit / Tom Clancy.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-399-14870-1

ISBN 0-399-14914-7 (Limited Edition)

1. Ryan, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. John

Paul II, Pope, 1920—Assassination attempts—Fiction.

3. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 4. Americans—

England—Fiction. 5. Assassination—Fiction.

6. Popes—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553L245R39 2002 2002067958

813'.54—dc21

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 This book is printed on acid-free paper. ©

BOOK DESIGN BY LOVEDOG STUDIO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Leanart, Joni, and Andy, for holding my hand behind the Old Curtain, and the crash-course in smuggling.

Alex, of course, for holding the other one at all times.

Tom and the lads at Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress. So fine a body of men is difficult to find,

and a rare pleasure to discover.

The FSOs at the United States Embassy,' Budapest, for so graciously handling an unannounced walk-in.

And to Michael, Melissa, Gilbert, and CDR Marsha, in anticipation of your superior professionalism.

The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil.

PYTHAGORAS

Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man.

CONFUCIUS

PROLOGUE:

THE BACK GARDEN

THE SCARY PART, Jack decided, was going to be driving. He'd already bought a Jaguar—

pronounced jag-jou-ah over here, he'd have to remember—but both times he'd walked to it at the

dealership, he'd gone to the left-front door instead of the right. The dealer hadn't laughed at him, but

Ryan was sure he'd wanted to. At least he hadn't climbed into the passenger seat by mistake and really

made an ass of himself. He'd have to remember all that: The "right" side of the road was the left. A right

turn crossed oncoming traffic, not a left turn. The left lane was the slow lane on the interstates—

motorways, he corrected himself. The plugs in the wall were all cockeyed. The house didn't have central

heating, despite the princely price he'd paid for it. There was no air-conditioning, though that probably

wasn't necessary here. It wasn't the hottest of climates: The locals started dropping dead in the street

when the mercury topped 75. Jack wondered what the D.C. climate would do to them. Evidently, the

"mad dogs and Englishmen" ditty was a thing of the past.

But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army-Air Force Exchange

Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they'd have

proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.

So many other discordant notes. British television was different, of course, not that he really expected

much chance to vegetate in front of the phosphor screen anymore, but little Sally needed her ration of

cartoons. Besides, even when you were reading something important, the background chatter of some

mindless show was comforting in its own way. The TV news wasn't too bad, though, and the

newspapers were particularly good—better than those he normally read at home, on the whole, "but he'd

miss the morning Far Side. Maybe the International Tribune had it, Ryan hoped. He could buy it at the

train station kiosk. He had to keep track of baseball anyway.

The movers—removers, he reminded himself—were beavering away under Cathy's direction. It wasn't a

bad house, though smaller than their place at Peregrine Cliff, now rented to a Marine colonel teaching the

earnest young boys and girls at the Naval Academy. The master bedroom overlooked what seemed to

be about a quarter-acre of garden. The realtor had been particularly enthused about that. And the

previous owners had spent a lot of time there: It was wall-to-wall roses, mainly red and white, to honor

the houses of Lancaster and York, it would seem. There were pink ones in between to show that they'd

joined together to form the Tudors, though that house had died out with Elizabeth I—and ultimately made

way for the new set of Royals, whom Ryan had ample reason to like.

And the weather wasn't bad at all. They'd been in country three days and it hadn't rained at all. The sun

rose very early and set late, and in the winter, he'd heard, it never came up and immediately went back

down again. Some of the new friends he'd made at the State Department had told him that the long nights

could be hard on the little kids. At four years and six months, Sally still qualified for that. Five-month-old

Jack probably didn't notice such things, and fortunately, he slept just fine—he was doing so right now, in

fact, in the custody of his nanny, Margaret van der Beek, a young redhead and daughter of a Methodist

minister in South Africa. She'd come highly recommended… and then had been cleared by a

back-ground check performed by the Metropolitan Police. Cathy was a little concerned about the whole

idea of a nanny. The idea of somebody else raising her infant grated on her like fingernails on a

chalkboard, but it was an honored local custom, and it had worked out pretty well for one Winston

Spencer Churchill. Miss Margaret had been vetted through Sir Basil's agency—her own agency, in fact,

was officially sanctioned by Her Majesty's government. Which meant precisely nothing, Jack reminded

himself. He'd been thoroughly briefed in the weeks before coming over. The "opposition"—a British term

also used at Langley—had penetrated the British intelligence community more than once. CIA believed

they hadn't done so at Langley yet, but Jack had to wonder about that. KGB was pretty damned good,

and people were greedy all over the world. The Russians didn't pay very well, but some people sold their

souls and their freedom for peanuts. They also didn't carry a flashing sign on their clothing that said I AM

A TRAITOR.

Of all his briefings, the security ones had been the most tiresome. Jack's dad had been the cop in the

family, and Ryan himself had never quite mastered that mode of thinking. It was one thing to look for

hard data amid the cascade of crap that worked its way up the intelligence system, quite another to look

with suspicion at everyone in the office and yet expect to work cordially with them. He wondered if any

of the others regarded him that way… probably not, he decided. He'd paid his dues the hard way, after

all, and had the pale scars on his shoulder to prove it, not to mention the nightmares of that night on

Chesapeake Bay, the dreams in which his weapon never fired despite his efforts, Cathy's frantic cries of

terror and alarm ringing in his ears. He'd won that battle, hadn't he? Why did the dreams think otherwise?

Something to talk to a pshrink about, perhaps, but as the old wives' tale went, you had to be crazy to go

to a pshrink…

Sally was running about in circles, looking at her new bedroom, admiring the new bed being assembled

by the removers. Jack kept out of the way. Cathy had told him he was unfitted even to supervise this sort

of thing, despite his tool kit, without which no American male feels very manly, which had been among

the first things unpacked. The removers had their own tools, of course—and they, too, had been vetted

by SIS, lest some KGB-controlled agent plant a bug in the house. It just wouldn't do, old boy.

"Where's the tourist?" an American voice asked. Ryan went to the foyer to see who it—

"Dan! How the hell are you?"

"It was a boring day at the office, so Liz and I came out to see how things are going for you." And sure

enough, just behind the Legal Attaché was his beauty-queen wife, the long-suffering St. Liz of the FBI

Wives. Mrs. Murray went over to Cathy for a sisterly hug and kiss, then the two of them went

immediately off to the garden. Cathy loved the roses, of course, which was fine with Jack. His dad had

carried all the gardening genes in the Ryan family, and passed on none to his son. Murray gazed at his

friend. "You look like hell."

"Long flight, boring book," Jack explained.

"Didn't you sleep on the way across?" Murray asked in surprise.

"On an airplane?" Ryan responded.

"It bothers you that much?"

"Dan, on a ship, you can see what's holding you up. Not in an airplane."

That gave Murray a chuckle. "Better get used to it, bud. You're gonna be building up a lot of

frequent-flyer miles hopping back and forth to Dulles."

"I suppose." Strangely, Jack hadn't really considered that when he'd accepted the posting. Dumb, he'd

realized too late. He'd be going back and forth to Langley at least once a month—not the greatest thing

for a reluctant flyer.

"The moving going okay? You can trust this bunch, you know. Bas has used them for twenty-plus years,

my friends at the Yard like them, too. Half of these guys are ex-cops." And cops, he didn't have to say,

were more reliable than spooks.

"No bugs in the bathroom? Great," Ryan observed. During his very short experience of it so far, Ryan

had learned that life in the intelligence service was a little different from teaching history at the Naval

Academy. There probably were bugs—but wired to Basil's office…

"I know. Me, too. Good news, though: You'll be seeing a lot of me—if you don't mind."

Ryan nodded tiredly, trying to manage a grin. "Well, at least I'll have somebody to have a beer with."

"That's the national sport. More business gets done in pubs than at the office. Their version of the

country club."

"The beer's not too bad."

"Better than the piss we have at home. I'm fully converted on that score."

"They told me at Langley that you do a lot of Intel work for Emil Jacobs."

"Some." Murray nodded. "Fact of the matter is, we're better at it than a lot of you Agency types. The

Operations people haven't recovered from seventy-seven yet, and I'm not sure that'll happen for a while."

Ryan had to agree. "Admiral Greer thinks so, too. Bob Ritter is pretty smart—maybe a little too smart, if

you know what I mean—but he doesn't have enough friends in Congress to get his empire expanded the

way that he wants."

Greer was the CIA's chief analyst, Ritter the Ops director. The two were often at odds.

"They don't trust Ritter like they do the DDL Carryover from the Church Committee mess ten years ago.

You know, the Senate never seems to remember who ran those operations. They canonize the boss and

crucify the troops who tried to follow his orders—though badly. Damn, was that a—" Murray searched

for the word. "The Germans call it a schweinerei. No translation, exactly, but, you know, it just sounds

like what it is."

Jack grunted with amusement. "Yeah, better than fuckup."

The CIA's effort to assassinate Fidel Castro, which had been run out of the office of the Attorney

General during the time of Camelot, had been right out of Woody Woodpecker, with a sprinkling of the

Three Stooges: politicians trying to imitate James Bond, a character made up by a failed Brit spook. The

movies just weren't the real world, as Ryan had learned the hard way, first in London, and then in his

own living room.

"So, Dan, how good are they really?"

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: